Under

by Diana Knightley

Chapter 27

  Luna looked pensive. She had been quiet during dinner and now she kept looking at the door Sarah, Rebecca, and Dr Mags all disappeared through headed for their bunks. Beckett said, trying to sound upbeat. “I guess the Zodiac is out of the question.”

  Luna distractedly said, “Oh yeah, I guess so.” The rain was growing louder. The ship beginning to storm-pitch.

  “How about we stay here?” He got the deck of cards and flipped through them. “You know how to play war?”

  Luna nodded. She was the quietest he had ever seen her. No easy smile or sparkling mood. Beckett took a turn and then Luna. She said, looking at her cards, “It’s not even a big storm, nothing I haven’t weathered before.”

  Beckett placed down a card. “I’m sure.”

  The ship rocked to the right causing Luna to slide into Beckett. “I mean — is it my turn? It’s just we Waterfolk have ways of dealing with storms, that make it easier…” she placed a card down matching Beckett’s, and they played out a battle sequence that Beckett won. He took all the cards. Luna seemed not to notice. She had five cards left in her hand.

  He asked, “Tell me how Waterfolk deal with storms.” The ship pitched left and Luna braced her foot to keep from sliding off the seat.

  “I don’t know, um, we—” He placed a card, she placed a card. “Go bird. That’s one thing, try to hunker down and turn off your brain and get through.” The boat pitched forward and free fell causing Beckett and Luna to fly up and crash back to the seat. Beckett’s stomach lurched. Luna screamed. Dan in the kitchen yelled, “Hey!” and a pile of something crashed.

  He sat sideways on the booth, leaned against the wall, and pulled Luna to his chest. “Come here. This is nothing, right? A minor storm. That was just a big wave and Lenny is probably driving.” The boat pitched to the left again. Beckett tightened his hold around Luna.

  She said, “It surprised me that’s all.” He peeked at her eyes, they were closed tight. She was curled in his arms.

  The boat pitched forward again and in one quick move Luna dove up under the front of Beckett’s shirt.

  Beckett chuckled down at the big lump on his front that was Luna’s head and shoulders. “Better?”

  “Much better.” Then she said, “I’m sorry I’m stretching out your shirt.”

  “No worries.”

  “It’s not that I’m scared. It’s—”

  “I think I’ll join you.” He pulled his arms in the sleeves and wiggled his head down into the neck of the shirt, stretching it up and out. Yep, his shirt would be ruined, but he was completely okay with that. He whispered, “So how do you ‘Go Bird’?”

  Luna lifted her chin and looked up at him. The green of his t-shirt shadowed her face. “Kind of like this. You wrap your wings around your head. The hard part is you’re supposed to stop thinking.”

  He asked, “How are you supposed to do that?”

  She said, “I never really figured it out.”

  He said, “Maybe you have to distract your—”

  Dan’s voice interrupted them as he came around the corner from the kitchen, “Man, that was — um, Army, whatcha doing?”

  Beckett said, from inside the shirt. “I’m going bird Dan, what does it look like I’m doing?”

  Dan chuckled. The ship pitched right. “I’m not going to be able to get anything done with this maniac driving the ship, so Jeffrey and I are headed to the bunks. Luna do you need anything?”

  Luna’s face was pressed into Beckett’s chest, under the cloth. She said quietly, “I can’t think of anything.”

  “All right birdies, want the lights off?”

  Beckett said, “No, keep them on.”

  Jeffrey came around the corner, putting on his raincoat to make it from the door of the galley to the door of the bunk room. “Want to share my raincoat to the bunk room?”

  Beckett said, “I think we’ll stay in here tonight.”

  Dan said, “If you get bored, the cutlery needs to get packed.”

  After they left, Beckett began to sing, low and slow, not well, but softly.

  Luna asked, “Is that the song we danced to on the Outpost?”

  “One of them.” He continued, “Oooh, sad to say, that is the way, we gotta play…”

  Luna said, “I like that, it’s nice, can you keep doing that?”

  Beckett nodded and kept singing.

  Chapter 28

  When they woke up the next morning Beckett and Luna were stiff but relieved that the storm was behind them. They made a pot of coffee and took mugs onto the deck to see the sunrise. It was epic.

  They leaned on Beckett’s favorite railing. He said, “Well, we made it through.”

  Luna said, “With you it’s never making it through, it’s living on.”

  He put his arm around her. “Thank you. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  A flock of birds flew past the boat, calling their own style of good morning. Beckett and Luna arched their heads back to watch them fly.

  “So we have chores today and then we’re at Heighton Port, where it sounds like I have more chores, but after I’ll call my aunts to come pick us up in the truck. Your board should fit, or we’ll rent a trailer or something…”

  Luna asked, “What about the camps and the settlements?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Why do you have to go? You don’t, you’re coming to my house, so I think we’ll skip that part.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Yeah, we have a lot to figure out, but let’s just get you home first.”

  Chapter 29

  The activity on the ship was frenetic. They were boxing, piling, organizing, drying down wet equipment, and then packing it up. Beckett and Jeffrey helped everyone in turns. Luna helped Sarah and Rebecca in the lab, talking about life on the sea, answering questions about her life as Waterfolk. Then there was a farewell lunch. They gathered on deck to eat sandwiches.

  Sarah asked, “Beckett, Luna, what’s next for you? Will you come out with us next trip?”

  Luna looked expectantly at Beckett, would they? This was really awesome. And partly familiar. Familiar enough to not be scary, except of course the storms. But if she wanted to live at sea there would be storms. Question was, did she want a sea-life?

  She wanted a life with Beckett. That was all she knew.

  Beckett answered, “As great as this has been, I don’t think the sea is for me. If you guys would do some land animal research I’d be there in a second.”

  Luna put her head on his shoulder.

  Dan shook his head sadly. “Have you learned nothing Army? You’re thinking land-based, but it’s the oceans, man. You gotta come to terms with the mysterious depths.”

  “No thank you. And I’ll remind you that Navy chefs need land-based farmers for their food.”

  “True that.”

  Beckett asked, “What is everyone else doing?”

  Rebecca said, “Me and Dan and Sarah share a flat near the university. Sarah and I go to the office starting Monday and Sarah teaches this semester, so we won’t be back on the high seas for many months. It’s all so boring, am I right Dan?”

  He said, “Boring as hell. I hate it. I can’t wait to come back out.”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “I’m going to miss it. Give me boring any day.”

  Rebecca smiled sadly then continued, “Dr Mags sits in her recliner until we call her up to come with us on another adventure.”

  “Not true, I have a job. But I do sit in a recliner a lot.”

  Captain Aria came down and gave everyone a speech about how much the trip had accomplished and how proud they should be about the research they had conducted. And that the H2OPE would be going back out in four months and they were all welcome. As she finished Luna raised her hand.

  “How long until port?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Mind if I get out and paddle it?”

  Dan interrupted, “You plan to race us to sho
re Nomad?”

  Luna smirked. “It would be foolhardy to suggest that I could beat this big ship. No, I mean to paddle alongside it.”

  Dan laughed.

  Captain Aria said, “We’ll pull to a stop, let your board down, and see you at port. It was a pleasure meeting you, Luna.”

  The lunch was finished. The day was calm and clear. The H2OPE slowed. Beckett asked, “You’re sure about this?”

  Luna answered, “I told you I was going to paddle to meet you at Heighton Port. I promised. I mean to fulfill that promise.”

  Beckett nodded. “Wait, wear this.” He took off the watch and gave it to her.

  She said, “You don’t need an insurance policy, I’m coming.”

  “It’s not insurance, it’s tradition.” He helped her latch it to her wrist and turned on the winch to lower Luna’s board to the water.

  Luna stood at the opening in the railing at the top of the ladder. She swayed back, stepped forward, and leapt out —

  Beckett clamped his eyes closed and under his breath said, “Splash,” as Luna hit the water with a kabloosh.

  Dan leaned beside him, as well as everyone else on the ship, and they watched as Luna deftly climbed on her paddleboard. Dan bellowed, “On your mark, get set, go!”

  Luna grinned a big cheeky grin, put her paddle in the water pushed back, and paddled, fast. Dan said, “Now how about that? Do you see this Beckett — your girlfriend is a freaking goddess.”

  Beckett laughed.

  Dan said, “How can you be smiling? You’ve got to be asking yourself, how does an army guy keep a woman like that happy.”

  “I don’t know. Seriously. How this will work is a mystery I need to figure out. I’m only smiling because of one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s headed in the right direction.”

  Chapter 30

  Luna paddled with sure strokes to the finish line as everyone on deck cheered. She had fallen behind. She knew she would, it was a ship after all, but she was way faster than anyone had expected.

  As she paddled up, she kissed both her biceps with a grin and Beckett laughed while Dan pretended to swoon.

  Ropes stretched from the boat, across the large square submerged rooftop to the wooden dock, numbered 49. Luna looked at the scene, docks created a maze around submerged and half-submerged rooftops. Boats were lashed and tied everywhere. Sailers and crew bustling around, cranes hoisting, and farther up on shore, people, so many people and buildings and traffic — she looked back down at her paddleboard. She would need to take this in steps. Concentrate on Beckett. The dock. The port city would come later.

  Luna lashed her board to the cleat as Beckett called down from the ship, “Welcome to Heighton Port!”

  She called up, “I totally let you win.”

  He said, “Of course, and because Dan’s ego is very fragile, I won’t tell him.”

  Dan was leaning over the railing right beside him. “That was epic Luna. I could watch you paddle all day, but I have more work to do, so I’ll see you when you and Beckett come over for dinner, like next week. Sarah says you have to.”

  Luna leaned on her paddle and beamed up at Beckett. “Want me to come up?”

  Beckett glanced around and seemed surprised to see a stack of plastic boxes beside his feet. “Um, don’t come up, wait there for a minute, I want to come down and kiss you on shore. I’ll get this to its — and um — I’ll come down.” He spun away and turned back and rested the box on the railing. “Have I told you how epically glad I am that you’re here? That we made it?”

  She smiled up at him and he smiled down at her, paused, smiling, happy, momentarily, until he remembered the boxes. “I’m finishing this — down in a second.”

  He turned away for real this time and darted across the decks to the lab.

  Chapter 31

  Beckett barged in. “I think this is the last of the boxes? I want to run down and meet Luna on shore. We’ll come back in a bit to get our things.”

  Sarah put down the pen. “Oh Beckett, I didn’t think about that. This is momentous isn’t it, you and Luna on shore together? That’s really great.” She came around the counter to hug him.

  Rebecca walked in. “Are we hugging goodbye already?”

  Beckett said, “Not really, I’ll be back for my things, but yeah, I guess we are hugging goodbye.”

  Sarah was misty-eyed. “Beckett’s sea maiden is beckoning from the shore, and his hot self with his tattooed arms and dimpled smile plans to rush into her arms and leave us for good.”

  Rebecca pretended to sob. “Beckett’s leaving us?” She shook her head solemnly and held his shoulders. “You were the kind of hot that was epically good to have around, Beckett.”

  He rolled his eyes, “Guys, you’re objectifying me again.”

  Rebecca said, “I will never have as good looking an army guy to carry my test tubes.” She sighed deeply. “You take care of yourself, if you need an ocean biologist to . . . I don’t know, explain the cycle of fish life, give me a call.”

  “Definitely Rebecca, It’s been really good getting to know you all—”

  Behind them Jeffrey, then Dr Mags entered the lab and joined the circle hugging Beckett goodbye when Dan shoved through the door. “The police are talking to your girl.”

  They rushed to the railing. A police boat was at the end of the dock, two police officers stood in the shadows of the ship with Luna between them. Beckett called down, “What’s going on?”

  The police officer on the left glanced up, then ignored him.

  Beckett climbed down the ladder as Luna’s voice rose. “— It’s mine, it belongs to me!”

  On the bottom rung Beckett leapt to the submerged rooftop and splashed across in a run. One of the police officers yanked Luna’s paddle from her grip.

  Beckett yelled, “Give that back, it belongs to her! What’s your name, your badge number?” He leapt to the dock as a police officer moved to block his way.

  “I’m officer Capstone, what business have you got here?”

  “She’s with me.”

  The policeman shoved him backwards. “She’s not with you. She’s a Nomad, and she’s unregistered.”

  Beckett stepped to the left. Officer Capstone blocked him, stepping close, his chest bowed out, eyes locked on Beckett’s face.

  Behind Beckett Luna begged, “Please don’t, please.” The other police officer brought his heel down on Luna’s paddle with force, breaking the handle in half.

  Beckett shoved officer Capstone in the chest, hard, and rushed the officer holding the broken paddle. “That’s hers, you give it back.”

  Two more police officers stepped onto the dock, causing Beckett’s attention to shift, and without warning Officer Capstone punched Beckett in the stomach.

  Luna screamed as Beckett doubled over. He hadn’t seen that punch coming. He should have known better.

  Officer Capstone swung again, an uppercut aimed for Beckett’s nose. When it connected, Beckett’s head jerked back with a blinding blast of pain. Blood rushed down the front of his face.

  “Beckett!”

  Beckett stumbled back three steps. A club swung down on his back, knocking him forward to his knees, and a boot shoved him face down to the wooden planks. His cheek smacked the ground with a thud. His arms were yanked behind and up, and his wrists were bound.

  Luna pleaded, “Please, you’re hurting him! You’re hurting him!”

  Beckett was facing right, Luna was on his left. He couldn’t see her. He was contorted, pressed face down. She sounded scared. She was begging, and he didn’t understand what was going on. None of this made sense. Plus the pain. Shooting pain blasted around his eyes. His forehead ached. His nose stabbed, full, his breathing labored — it all made him feel like he couldn’t calm down.

  He yelled, “Luna! You okay?” His lips rubbed on the rough hewn wood of the dock, smeared in his blood. “Are you okay?”

  _________________

  Pa
rt II

  Port

  Chapter 32

  “Luna, are you okay?”

  A voice growled from above his back, “I didn’t say you could talk to her.”

  Luna sobbed. She sounded so desperate that Beckett clamped his eyes shut and yelled, “Fuck! What are you doing to her?”

  Dan was on the dock. Speaking to the police, his voice calm and measured.

  Beckett had trouble making out Dan’s words over the pain and confusion, but he listened, trying to make them out, “—one of our crew. Yes, sir. Of course. No, I didn’t know that—”

  Beckett yelled, “Dan, what’s going on?”

  Luna was all sniffles and whimpers. Dan didn’t answer.

  A police officer said, “—registration at the camps, paperwork and mandatory health evaluations—”

  Dan said, “—Captain will vouch for him, will take him back on board—”

  Beckett asked, “Dan, what are they saying, Dan?”

  The knee on his back grew heavier and more painful. It was hard to breathe.

  Dan said loudly, “Can I speak with my crew member?”

  The knee raised from Beckett’s back. A voice growled, “Don’t get up.”

  A moment later a knee appeared in Beckett’s field of vision. “Dan?”

  Dan leaned all the way down, face on the dock. Through the blood in Beckett’s eyes, Dan looked blurry and tinted red. “Beckett, these officers say that Luna has to be escorted to the camps. I’m talking them into letting you back on the ship and we’ll figure the rest out.” Dan clapped him on the shoulder.

  Beckett nodded, scraping his cheek on the rough wood. “Yes, as long as she’s okay.” He raised his shoulders to turn his head. At the end of the dock Luna’s bare feet were surrounded by the heavy boots of the police.

  Luna voice, her face out of his field of vision, said, “Look what you did to him.”

  A police officer said, “According to the laws of the Unified Mainland you, Nomadic Water Dweller, will be escorted directly to the closest camp for Organization and Resettlement. The paddleboard will be impounded.”